金融時報:讓城市對孩子們友好一點

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2021年12月28日

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讓城市對孩子們友好一點

紐約和倫敦都是由那些不會親自照顧孩子的男人設(shè)計而成的，因此，它對孩子們太冷酷了。我們要怎么樣才能建成對兒童友好的城市？

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

snarl[snɑ?l] 吼叫, 怒罵

chivy['t??v?] 追逐

dystopia[d?s't??pi?] 地獄般的處境

communal[k?'mju?nl] 公有的

floodlit['fl?dl?t] 泛光燈照明的

pram [præm] （英）嬰兒車

How to make cities more child-friendly（722 words）

By Simon Kuper

One morning the pedestrian crossing outside my kids' school was entirely blocked by an SUV. This is normal in Paris, where most drivers think zebra crossings are purely decorative. I rushed my children across the road while snarling at the driver. He shrugged, saying he had to drop off his child.

When I came out a few minutes later, his SUV was still blocking the crossing. By this time he was just hanging out, chatting to a friend. I have a bad personality, so I scratched the paint on his car with my key, then walked off ashamed. A month later I paid for the driver's paintwork, and he told me he wouldn't block the crossing any more.

Raising children in the city is stressful. However, most parents now do it. For the first time ever, a majority of humans (including children) live in urban areas. Even dense metropoles such as New York and London are filling with kids. These cities were designed by men who didn't do childcare, and it shows.

The single thing that did most to deprive this generation of children and parents of their freedom is the car, says Tim Gill, a British thinker on childhood. In 1970, about 80 per cent of British eight-year-olds walked to school unaccompanied. By 1990, only 9 per cent did. What changed in the intervening period was that British car use doubled. If very few western kids get killed in traffic now, that's largely because hardly any of them go outside alone.

That means parents now spend most evenings and weekends with their kids. Sometimes my children kick a football around the breakfast table. I often feel I live in a playground. But it's even more frustrating for them. My daughter, aged 11, does not cross the busy road in front of our house alone. The kids are our prisoners, and we are theirs.

Throw into this mix another lethal piece of tech: the iPad, the robot babysitter. Instead of spending your afternoon chivvying your kids, you can now just let them zone out to the video game Clash Royale. This is especially attractive when air pollution (largely car-induced) makes it, at times, officially unsafe for them to go outside. That's a common event in London, and standard in the children's dystopia (and therefore failed city) Beijing.

Happily, the car-kid balance is now shifting in many cities. Bike lanes, shared cars, Ubers and eventually driverless vehicles mean that fewer urbanites need to own cars. That frees up parking spaces. In the space now occupied by an empty car, you could install a ping-pong table, slide or vegetable garden. Any of those would make the city happier, greener, safer, healthier and more communal. It would also be smarter spending: until now we have economised on play spaces in part so that we could afford to treat more illness. (Diabetes alone costs the UK's National Health Service £12bn a year.)

Cities also need to use their spaces more. Civic buildings could house play centres on evenings and weekends. When offices and supermarkets are closed, their car parks should be used for football or skateboarding. School playgrounds should stay open at weekends, and floodlit parks after dark. Already, schemes such as London Play allow residents to request that their streets be briefly pedestrianised, typically on Sundays, letting locals go outside and meet each other. “We invite the elderly neighbours, and make sure there is tea and cake out,” says Sam Williams, a landscape architect at Arup who studies child-friendly cities.

A child-friendly space is also a parent-friendly space. The urban parent's fantasy is a playground with coffee. Cities should encourage coffee trucks.

Doing much of this would be easy. It just requires a change of attitude. Many cities now think of themselves as adult-only clubs, and regard children as intruders. I see it in my own Parisian apartment block: a pram beside the staircase is seen as an antisocial blockage, whereas the parked car outside is normal. The moment a child starts playing in our courtyard, one of the neighbours mechanically opens her window and shouts. The city belongs to her.

She will eventually lose. One day urban kids will be freed from captivity. Then they and adults will share the city fairly (which means that kids won't be allowed to run laps around restaurant tables). It just won't happen in time for my generation of parents.

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測題目：

1.What did the author do when he found the man chatting to a friend with his car blocking the crossing?

A.He snarled at the man and walked off.

B.He stopped to join their conversation.

C.He left key scratches on the man's car.

D.He rushed his children across the road.

答案(1)

2.According to the author, parents use iPad to ____.

A.let their children play alone when the air quality is unsafe.

B.play the video game Clash Royale with their children.

C.keep their children away from busy roads and car emissions.

D.prevent their children from kicking football around the table.